Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
Publication date: 1971 Edition: Second Vintage Books Edition, June 1998 Publisher: Hunter S. Thompson 204 pages Genre: Gonzo Journalism
The plot of the book chronicles Thompson’s discovery of the state of American culture through his taking of two trips to Las Vegas. Thompson, referred to as Raoul Duke in the book, is accompanied by his attorney, Dr. Gonzo. Together, the two men set out to Las Vegas to discover the American Dream. A New York-based sports magazine assigns Thompson/Duke, a Gonzo journalist, to cover the Mint 400, an annual motorcycle race that takes place in the Nevada Desert. The magazine company rents Thompson a car, a hotel room, and pays him a stipend, therefore giving Thompson and Gonzo the means to explore Vegas. The two men continuously inhale drugs, steal and frighten citizens, while debating about the state of humankind. Gonzo leaves Vegas first, after a bizarre fight ensures between the two men, and as Thompson is about to leave Las Vegas, Gonzo suddenly sends him a second assignment in Las Vegas: to cover the National Conference of District Attorneys for the Rolling Stones. The two men return to Vegas to use this second opportunity to further their stay in Vegas and find the American Dream. When they finally find it, it is a rumpled old building that used to serve as a psychiatric clinic.
It’s easy to see this book as someone chronicling his drug use days in the 60’s/70’s just to entertain those of us who weren’t alive in that era, but Thompson isn’t just rambling when he tells us seemingly unrelated events that happen to him in Vegas. All these stories are his comments of aspects on American life. For example, his attorney, butt-naked and in a drug haze, tackles a maid that enters their hotel room for cleaning. She screams and is terrified at first, but Thompson and Gonzo trick her into thinking they’re undercover policemen, and offers her payment if she updates them monthly about whether there are dealers spotted in the hotel. She not only happily agrees and promises not to mention what had just transpired between then, but starts to address them with titles of respect. It’s a gruesome anecdote, I know, but it can also be thought of as how Americans can justify any crazy action if they think there’s a higher purpose behind it, as in religions fervent, or meditative drug-use. Other stories in the book touch on the themes of paranoia and misrepresentation of the drug culture, racism, and police brutality.
The main theme of the book is how the counterculture movement failed to improve America, and instead, produced a dysfunctional, decrepit generation of people. Thompson and Gonzo continuously take drugs to escape their problems or to improve their state of mind, but it only makes them crazier and more paralyzed. Throughout the book, Vegas is the metaphor for the base, immoral state of the American people. No one really knows what the American Dream is, and when Thompson finally finds it on Paradise Blvd, it is a shattered psychiatric building.
I would recommend reading this book, because it does make you think about human nature, even if the plot isn’t very engrossing. Furthermore, the illustrations in this book by Ralph Steadman are great. They add a deeper level of meaning to the text. For example, Thompson picks up an innocuous hitch-hiker, but doesn’t physically describe him. Steadman’s illustration of this guy shows a hazy, high young man with a goofy smile, wearing of a T-shirt of Mickey Mouse, who is giving the Victory sign wearing a T-Shirt with the Nazi symbol. It’s unusual, yet fun, to see multi-media forms of art complementing each other to deepen themes. I don’t know if I would read anything else by Thompson, but this book is worth an afternoon of your life.